Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Pontius Pilate's wife/1

Pontius Pilate's wife

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page • Most recent review

Result: delisted AustralianRupert (talk) 02:08, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

This article is not very thorough in its coverage of the topic, and reading it raises more questions than it answers. The following problems were present when I first edited the article:

1. A work apparently composed in the seventeenth century is cited in a section called "early Christian literature".
2. A sentence from the New Testament about an entirely unrelated figure who probably didn't have the same name is quoted with no commentary indicating why it is quoted.
3. An obvious modern forgery is given its own section of the article but it is not clarified that it is a forgery.
4. The highly dubious claims in the infobox that she was born and died in Israel are not sourced, and the former was templated over two years ago.
5. The "Christian literature and legends [that] have amplified the brief anecdote about Pilate's wife in the New Testament" are barely discussed in the body ("legends" are not mentioned at all), and they definitely should be.
6. The anti-semitic elements of her veneration by later Christians, along with that of her husband, are not mentioned.
7. There is an unsourced claim that the name "Procula" originates in translations of the Gospel of Nicodemus, but Nicodemus dates to the fourth century, and "the Letter of Pilate to Herod" apparently called her "Procla" and at least one scholar dates that letter to the third or fourth century (see this book by the leading NT scholar in the United States). Also: what translations?

These problems about things I do know about. All of these problems were already present in the 2008 version, so I don't think this should have ever been listed as a GA. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 07:35, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

(Note: this page is being created from the previous individual reassessment that was opened through a misunderstanding; a community reassessment was what was desired. I've done this for Hijiri 88.) —BlueMoonset (talk) 19:32, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

(Further note: I have copied the section below, which was added to the abovementioned closed individual reassessment back in September, and to which Hijiri88 replied earlier today. This discussion should continue here, on the active reassessment.) BlueMoonset (talk) 17:39, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

Comments by Llywrch

Although no one has commented on this proposed reassessment, I concur that the article doesn't meet the intended standards for GA, & either needs work to keep this status or be downgraded.

Having read this article, I am left with a confused impression of this minor character. (I've read the Gospels several times each, & managed to overlook her existence until I discovered this article, so I feel comfortable calling her a "minor character".) Is there any evidence for pre-modern traditions about her? The talk page allude to the fact she might be mentioned in the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, which would indicate some pre-Medieval tradition about her. I'd also like a list of primary texts that name her "Procula", "Claudia", a combination of the two; otherwise, I'm left suspecting that she never was given a name, & any assertion that she had one is a hoax. (Yes, there are people who add hoaxes to Wikipedia articles that don't get much attention just to see how long the misinformation will stay.) Looking at the article on her husband, I found a lot of evidence that confirms there were many traditions about him; yet no indication whether any of those traditions mention her. Her only visibility appears to be in modern works -- which makes her something of a modern antihero.

Lastly, while I don't agree with some of Hijiri's criticisms, addressing most of them would be a good first step. But I haven't seen any effort to make any changes in response, so I wonder if the proper thing to do would be to remove it's GA classification, requiring any advocate for the article to make desired improvements to it. -- llywrch (talk) 21:10, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

@Llywrch: Re "Is there any evidence for pre-modern traditions about her?" Yes. As you indicate you have read the talk page, several NT apocrypha feature her much more prominently than Matthew. This material absolutely needs to be added to the article. But, not being a content expert, I don't feel comfortable doing so myself. FS does not appear to be either. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 02:21, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

Comments by Shearonink

Downgrade. To a C-Level.
This article might be more appropriately called "Cultural depictions of Pontius Pilate's wife" - if you look at the amount of content in the article about the cultural depictions there is more about Mrs. Pilate's appearances in all kinds of literature, both modern and not, in theatre, film and TV than there is about the woman herself. After all, there is only one sentence about her in the New Testament. If you want to look at a well-written article about a somewhat-minor person in the Bible then Dorcas, one of the disciples, is in much better shape, in my opinion at least a C-level (and Dorcas did have more than one sentence written about her). I became interested in how this article became a GA so I went poking around its editing history and the talk page's history. The procedure in the past, as I understand it, is that naming an article a GA was left up to individual editors. There is no record of community discussion about how the article qualified or if the article qualified, because no such discussion took place. In June 2008, an individual editor designated the article as GA, it received the GA icon in 2010 and that was that.
So, the question now is - does the article deserve to be a GA? In my opinion and in its present state?...No. Do I want to do the work to get it up to a GA quality-level. No, I do not. And from the looks of it, neither does anyone else. What level do I think it should receive? *Maybe* a C, maybe even start-class.
And this Reassessment is the first community review that the article has ever really received. This reassessment has been going on since June. I think the community consensus is pretty clear. Delist the article from GA, maybe even downgrade the article to a C and if anyone wants to work on it, let them improve it up to a B (and so on.) It serves no good purpose to let an article like this languish and keep its Good Article status during that languishment.
If nothing else changes within 7 days, I am going to request that an uninvolved editor or admin close this discussion and delist this article. Shearonink (talk) 05:54, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Comment: from what I can tell, the issues raised above have not been dealt with. As such, if there are no objections, I intend to close this review with the outcome of "delist". I will wait until this time tomorrow to do so, though, for any last minute objections. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 01:29, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

• Closed as delisted. Once the issues identified above have been dealt with, the article can be renominated at [[WP:GAN]. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 02:08, 7 January 2017 (UTC)